Hello folks, remember me? I’ve been tasked with writing today’s TCWU to (re)introduce myself. Hello! Hi. I’m Hannah. It’s been a while. Five years, actually. Five very normal years in which nothing significant has happened and not once have we “lived through history.” 

I left this industry in late 2020 from my job as news editor of Professional Adviser. The five years that followed saw me move into consumer journalism and then out of journalism altogether and into the world of marketing. It was a casual drink with an old friend on a swanky London rooftop that, earlier this year, sucked me back into an industry I’d once known so well.

So here we are, October 2025. October is a month that conjures up all sorts of imagery around change. Q3 gives way to Q4 and with it the pre-Christmas madness is upon us. The leaves turn from green to orange. Muesli in the morning becomes a bowl of porridge. Good tv is back on our screens and Claudia Winkleman is back in a cape. Yet the idea that October is a month of all-change is almost a paradox. Everything is about to look very different, and yet we know exactly what’s coming because we’ve seen it all before. 

This being an incredibly long-winded way of getting to my central point: the more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s been half a decade since I last worked in this industry, and yet so many of the same conversations are taking place. Regulation is still proving challenging for advisers; consolidation is everywhere; the advice gap is gaping; the impact of technology on advice remains a point of argument; and four million politicians have been made pensions minister in my absence, proving absolutely that Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (and later Bon Jovi) had a point.

That said, I don’t wish to sound as though no progress has been made. For a start, adviser Twitter is largely dead. On a more sincere note, this is an industry that now feels like it’s taking a more proactive approach to looking toward the future and deciding who it wants to attract and how it wants to be perceived. The PFS, for example, has recently put its money where its mouth is, committing to a £1m investment to be spent on attracting new talent into the industry. Then there was good news from our brilliant, fantastic, extremely interesting and oversubscribed event that took place in Glasgow: New Blood. We heard from planners going above and beyond to attract young and returning talent into advice, as well as from swathes of young people who were interested in a career in the sector. We ran the first ever live financial planning demonstration with the help of the ladies from Wellington Wealth, who have nerves of steel. And we discovered that studying beetles may be the ideal academic preparation if you’re interested in a career in paraplanning.

We’re not where we need to be just yet, but there’s certainly reason to feel cheerful. Earlier this year, for example, FT Adviser reported FCA data that revealed an uptick in the number of advisers aged under 25, demonstrating perhaps that industry efforts to appeal to Gen Z are beginning to work. What could be next? Perhaps the advice gap will start to close thanks to the Targeted Support proposals and more advanced technology that allows advisers to serve more customers. Perhaps young people will flood the industry and with them bring new, fun ways to speak to clients (“it’s giving early retirement!”). Perhaps the robots will take over after all, and… sorry no, I’ve had enough, ask somebody else. Probably though, change will continue at a pace we’re familiar with. And perhaps that’s for the best.

It’s misty, grey and rainy in London, and very nearly time for my favourite day of inherited American consumerism. In honour of Halloween, my song pick for the week is Nirvana’s cover of Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World. It has a haunting, eerie quality and, frankly, is just an all-round fantastic song that demands to be listened and re-listened to.

Thanks for reading.
Hannah